


One flesh, one evening which we shall NEVER SPEAK OF AGAIN, OKAY???

by gigantocellularis



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Canon-typical snark, F/F, Gideon the Ninth Spoilers (Locked Tomb Trilogy), Harrow the Ninth Spoilers (Locked Tomb Trilogy), Masturbation, One Shot, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Harrow the Ninth (Locked Tomb Trilogy), Short One Shot, and also humor because I can't write about sex without making jokes, i guess a little angst, potentially a little AU because its not totally clear where everyone ends up at the end of Ht9, the similies are working hard in this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:27:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28526187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gigantocellularis/pseuds/gigantocellularis
Summary: Waking up again in Harrow's body, Gideon discovers that the Reverend Daughter has left her an unusual reqest.
Relationships: Gideon Nav & Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Harrowhark Nonagesimus & Ianthe Tridentarius, Harrowhark Nonagesimus/Ianthe Tridentarius
Comments: 7
Kudos: 59





	One flesh, one evening which we shall NEVER SPEAK OF AGAIN, OKAY???

_An indeterminate amount of time after the Emperor’s murder_

Shit, Nonagesimus! If we didn’t have just the one body to share between us I swear I would fucking kill you. I wake up and immediately reach down to your gut, expecting to find another rapier there. There’s nothing. No apparent mortal danger of any kind. So, I guess I’m just housesitting while you’re off… Lyctoring somewhere? I don’t have the inclination to rummage through your shit to figure out what holy crusade you’re on today. I’m still mad at you. Your body feels weird in a way I can’t describe, but not in-the-process-of-being-murdered weird, which I guess is good?

We’re on a bed. I look around and see a spare, small room with chrome-coloured walls. There’s a gentle rumble of engines so I conclude we’re still in space. No bone chandeliers or boss-ass murals of melon cavaliers in sight though, which suggests we’re not in the Mithraeum anymore? Please don’t tell me you pulled some mischief that managed to get you evicted from God’s house, Nonagesimus, I’d just about die of admiration for you. So – no rapier through the gut, no terrifying nightmare death bees, no excruciating psychosexiual friendship drama or puritanical bodyswapping terrorists? (I mean, not right now, I haven’t opened the closet yet). In the absence of these what, my effulgent monarch, could have occasioned a summoning? I realise suddenly that your body needs to pee (ew) and swing your legs out over onto the floor to find a bathroom. After using the head (again, ew, shan’t describe) I catch sight of you – us? – in the mirror and just about lose my gourd all over again. My eyes in your face, Nonagesimus. Spare me. It makes me hate you and miss you all at once, you self-lobotomising genius. Your paint is, naturally, immaculate. The Pedantic Skull, Trippant or some shit, I’m sure. And you’ve ditched those rainbow-milk Mithraeum robes for some trad ninth black. A definite improvement.

I wonder back into the room with the bed and notice a slip of flimsy on the floor that I must have knocked off the bed when I got up. I flip it over and your crabby-ass handwriting scowls up at me. I instinctively wonder what kind of trouble I’m in. I mean, the last note you left me was friendly but four words doesn’t make up for 18 years of yelling in writing. As it turns out, though…

_Nav,_

_I apologise for the lack of progress regarding your corporeality. We have encountered some obstacles but the work is progressing. In the meantime, I must ask a favour. Such a request is unbecoming of the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House but it is a matter in which I feel you may have a degree of experience that I am lacking._

_Ianthe Tridentarius continues her overtures towards me, and I must admit to a degree of interest on my part. I believe circumstances may escalate soon, which I welcome, but I could not endure her taunting if she finds me… naïve in such matters. She does not strike me as the guiding type. Or as one likely to be patient in the face of inexperience._

_Therefore, I seek to draw on you as my cavalier primary in a technique more… intimate than swordplay. I assume that you are an accomplished autodidact in the ways of self-pleasure (as your taste in literature attests) and I therefore ask you to impart these skills to me as you did your skills with the blade. I hereby give consent for you to utilise my corporeal form in whatever way you see fit* to entrain these proficiencies. I am unsure how much time you will need but I have granted you the whole evening. The room is well-warded, you can count on being undisturbed until I return._

_*exception: interfere with my posterior and I will force your soul through a stroma._

God’s eternal lacquered BALLS, Nonagesimus! Talk about beating about the bush (sorry, couldn’t resist). Couldn’t you have just said ‘my inadvisable crush is saying she’s up for it and I need a crash course in masturbation to make sure I can instruct her properly so we both have a nice time’? Honestly, it took me three reads through to understand you weren’t planning to _fight_ her. Which I would still recommend over this shuttle-wreck of an idea. Also, ‘self-pleasure’? Barf springs eternal.

That said…

Goddamn it, but I miss having a body. For kinda this reason. Still not completely sure I wouldn’t rather spend the evening doing sword drills but hey, we might have time for both. I’m also pretty sure I can tease you about this for the next myriad, so its win-win. I’m completely ignoring the fact that this is all in favour of a tryst with _Ianthe fucking Tridentarius_ , whom, I feel I must remind you is only marginally less of a hell-beast than the LITERAL hell-beasts and OH YEAH _she_ _tried to kill us that one time_. However, given your immediate options she’s at least not 10 000 years old or a literal ice maiden (jury’s out on the figurative). So I guess we’re doing this?

I lie back on the bed and try and push aside how completely fucking weird this situation is, re-read your note to check you have _fully consented_ to this, er, procedure, then fold the flimsy into a sword shape before placing it back on the floor because procrastinating. I settle back and attempt to relax, pulling aside the heavy folds of the Ninth House robes (not a euphemism) so I can get some degree of relevant access (a euphemism). Your hands shake a little as I undo the buttons on your shirt and trousers and I feel… fear? Your fear. I can feel your fear. Of being touched, even by yourself. I feel that urge to go prey-animal limp or fight like a cornered construct. The fear of being… uncontained. Of having something… someone… connect with you in a way that doesn’t impart violence. Emperor Divine, Harrow, you’re like a flinch that somehow found itself a meat-suit.

But below that, there’s something else. It takes me a second to locate it as desire because it feels like a 300-foot well in a pool you thought was gonna be waist-deep. Yikes. OK – and I swear to John Gaius Our Lord the Biscuit Fiend Himself, Nonagesimus, that I didn’t look at _anything_ – I slowly put your hand down underneath the undone buttons of your loose trousers and placed it, gently, on top of your underwear. I just rested your hand there and felt that internal tension again between terror and wanting. I reached down further – eyes _closed_ , I swear – and moved your hand, with just a little pressure, over your – goddammit what am I gonna call it? What do you call it? Lemme just… whoa, Nonagesimus, your brain is like a textbook on human anatomy. But if I have to think terms like _mons pubis_ and _labia majora_ this thing’s gonna end before it even starts, so we’ll compromise, OK? Let’s say, I moved your hand, with just a little pressure, between your legs and over your _sex_ (it’s arcane, like Drearburh, you’ll love it!). Your body shivers, just a little. I feel the same, outside-the-world feeling I felt when we first woke up and I can name it now as desire. And I marvel at your desire, Harrowhark, because it’s as beautiful and brittle as a castle made from spun sugar.

But your body is so fricking tense. A whole lifetime of tense and I sense that’s something I’ll just have to work with. I also surmise that my go-to fantasies probably won’t cut it here, your brain would probably go blind. I am left with the question: what arouses the Reverend Daughter? I state this now: I AM NOT IMAGINING IANTHE NAKED. NOPE. NO. GROSS. You can do that heavy lifting yourself. I riffle back through your memories of the Mithraeum, looking for something to start us off, and your brain offers Ianthe’s fingers stroking the nape of your neck at that fucking awful bacchanale that Augustine orchestrated. The memory’s a little wobbly because you were quite drunk (congrats, Nonagesimus, didn’t know you had it in you) but the touch of Ianthe’s fingers is in sharp focus and I feel that spun-sugar feeling again. It’s accompanied by the trademark Harrowhark Nonagesiumus beacon-strength blush which I always pretended I couldn’t see beneath your paint. And Emperor Divine, Harrow, is _this_ what that shit feels like from the inside? You could sauté a snow leek on your face. (Not that they ever would have done something so _haute cuisine_ at Drearburgh – did we eat _anything_ that wasn’t boiled before we got to Canaan House?)

Okay, okay, I ignore that fact that all the blood in your body appears to want to hang out exclusively in the region between your forehead and your sternum (literally not where it needs to be for this activity), and zero back in on the Tridanterius talons at your nape in your mind’s eye. I move your hand in the same rhythm that Ianthe moves her fingers in your memory and feel a shiver in your spine again. Your muscles relax a fraction and I increase the pressure a little in response. Beneath the pads of your fingers, the cotton of your underwear gets damp. Your heart rate increases and I start to feel the delicious ache of blood being redirected to all the right places. On you it feels sharp, sudden, almost painful and I hold back a little, dialling the intensity down on the memory, keeping the rhythm the same but reducing the pressure a little. I put your other hand behind your head, into that unfamiliar, fast-growing hair and in your imagination allow Ianthe’s hand to move up from your neck and into your hair, too. The ache in your sex is stronger now but we’ve got used to it, and there’s a questing feeling to it, your hips begin to reach up to meet your hand. I take a deep breath and dart your hand beneath your underwear, the material warm and damp on the back of your hand, the tips of your fingers meeting a bristle of hair and soft flesh below it, tender with wanting. I hear a sound and realise it’s you, a soft moan escaping your lips. You tremble again and the part of you that’s me trembles a little too in concert.

Your mind takes me to the right moments. From Ianthe’s hand at the nape of your neck, to the moue of her mouth forming the sobriquet _Ninth_. The only place you could get that in God’s whole house. Your body feels quick and vital and oh so weirdly, wonderfully different from mine. I touch the pearl of your clit and a kind of lightning bolt goes through you, from groin to spine to brainstem, connecting the hand in your hair to the imaginary hand at your neck to the real and new and hungry hand under your clothes. I keep your fingers on your clit – gently, _gently_ – keeping that same rhythm from your memory, but pushing it a little as your heart speeds up faster. I reach down to your sex and bring up some of the wetness so I can keep your fingers sliding smoothly. You moan again and your other hand tightens in the hair on your head, pulling slightly. You bite your lip and I’m suddenly so _aware_ of your whole damn body, of every nerve ending, and I’m not sure if this is just the Lyctoral Experience or if it’s _you_ , Harrowhark Nonagesimus, but your whole nervous system feels like a map of some incredible galaxy laid out before me, hair and neck and nipples and stomach and hands and toes all spiral arms orbiting the great, glowing, central star of your hand on your clit and that burning, aching wanting further and deeper inside.

I push a little harder, increasing the pressure, holding myself – Gideon’s instincts – back to listen to what your body is telling me. To follow the map. A little to the left, a little lighter, a little heavier. I feel you tense again, but it’s a zeroing-in tension, not a fearful one. Your stomach muscles tighten and there’s a warmth at the base of your spine and your hips rise up to drive yourself harder into your hand. This takes you to the memory of regrowing Ianthe’s arm, of her bucking underneath you as you spun bone out of nothing to make her whole again. The memory surprises me with its intensity and your hand almost slips but I catch the recollection like a solar wave and imagine you meeting the pressure of Ianthe’s body in your mind’s eye with an answering one. I keep up the pressure and the rhythm of my fingers on your clit, just trying to keep in the sweet spot as your body moves to meet the images in your mind. Something deep inside you flutters like a fledgeling contemplating its first flight from the nest and shivers radiate outwards from the centre of you. Your thighs tense and begin to clamp around your hand. You bite your lip hard enough to draw blood.

I press harder, the pressure of your fingers on yourself reaching deep into the web of your nervous system and making a gathering, summoning feeling, intense and deep and delicious. The fledgling fluttering inside you gathers its courage and leaps from the nest and I push, push, push your fingers onto the point of light that your clit has become, every nerve ending in glorious, exhilarating freefall as you come with a sound part growl, part plea. The freefall becomes a strong wingbeat deep inside you and I take your hand off your clit and rest it, dripping wet, over your sex to feel the pulsing of that internal wingbeat at the surface of your body. You breathe out, intense, shuddering breaths and I feel tears leak out your eyes and run down, cool on your face and your ears.

I untangle your other hand from your hair and wipe the back of your arm over your eyes then rest it there, blocking out the dim light of the sleeping chamber.

“Well, that’s that,” I say inanely, out loud, trying to contain the welter of feelings that are coursing through us. A little later I swing your legs over the side of the bed and shuffle to the bathroom. I consider having a bath but your body reacts violently to any suggestion of getting in the tub and I have to search through your memories before I understand why. I use the sonic to clean you up (eyes shut, I promise) then accidentally glance at the mirror and narrowly avoid dying of embarrassment at the part Nav, part Nonagesimus afterglow expression that I find there. You blush again and I’m seriously concerned there’ll be a face paint conflagration from the heat of it. I resist the urge to wink at us.

I go back to the bedroom and sit back down on the bed, wondering what to do next. I suspect exploring is out of the question and your body doesn’t seem to want to sleep or eat which nixes both of my go-to post masturbation activities, so I’m kinda at a loss. I look again at the note and bite your lip, consider writing something in reply. _She doesn’t care about you, Nonagesimus. Be careful with yourself around her. Don’t let her eat your bones or whatever kinky necromancer shit she’s gonna try and pervade all up on you (unless you want that)._ And, as a coda, _how dare the universe allow YOU to get laid before ME?_ But I don’t, in the end. I mean really, what advice could I give you? You’ll do what you’ll do (during which, just to be clear, I will be at the very bottom of that well I seem to live in whenever you’re in the driving seat with my eyes tight shut and my fingers in my ears reciting the Noniad VERY LOUDLY to myself until I’m very very sure it’s over), and then whatever happens next you can tag me in if you need me. Standing back and letting you go through with this _incredibly terrible, awful, no good very bad plan_ will take all of my fealts, my crepuscular tallest, but I shall do it. One flesh, one end and all that.

Buuuuut if you could see your way clear to moaning ‘Coronabeth was the hot one’ directly into Ianthe’s ear as she makes you come then I would consider any debt you owe to me repaid and my soul will rest easy in the pit of your mind-well forever. Deal?

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is intended to depict a totally consensual situation but I can see it's kind of complicated so if it strikes anyone as needing additional tags please let me know and I'll add them.


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